


Outside of Normal

by hazel_3017



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Developing Relationship, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, M/M, POV Multiple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-08-19 11:15:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8203933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hazel_3017/pseuds/hazel_3017
Summary: Sidney wasn’t actually born sensory blind. It is the result of an accident when he was just a kid, pushed into the boards at just the wrong angle by an angry, jealous boy who’d known he’d never make it to the NHL and had hated that Sidney would, because that was never in question, not even at thirteen. It was Sidney’s first concussion. It robbed him of his soul senses and his ability to multiply by twelve. (Seriously, he can’t do it.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction.

** *Alex* **

 

Alex loves playing Pittsburgh, not least of all because it provides a rare—too rare—opportunity to see his soul mate, but also because it means he gets to square up against Sidney Crosby. Riling up Sidney Crosby means getting Zhenya riled up too, which means sex, _good_ sex, the kind Zhenya thinks is punishing but is actually a reward; Alex not so secretly loves being ordered around and made to choke on his soul mate’s dick.

Which Zhenya is well aware of, but it helps him maintain his angry façade and Penguins solidarity by pretending he’s not stupid for Alex or all of Alex’s kinks.

It works for them.

Playing Pittsburgh also means he gets to see Sidney Crosby all soft and demure. He’s less closed off and hockey crazed (for a measure of it, anyway) away from the rink and the game, which Alex only knows because Zhenya appointed himself as Sidney Crosby’s best friend years ago, right around the time he learnt that Sidney Crosby did not have a soul mate. Worse, Sidney Crosby is sensory blind and could not have reached for his other half even if he did have one. 

Zhenya has been insisting on bringing Sidney Crosby along for dinners and dates ever since he found out.

(It takes Alex a while to recognise he doesn’t mind the disruption into what should be a private time between him and his soul mate. It takes him longer to figure out why that is.)

Rare is a person without a mate, often ostracised and reviled by society, as Sidney has been for large parts of his life—Alex is put off by it as well at first. To not have a soul mate is unnatural; it’s God shaping someone’s soul and deciding it isn’t worth the love and companionship or their other half. It is not having an other half at all, like all human beings are meant to.

Alex used to not like being around Sidney, a little freaked out by the concept of someone not having a soul mate (it was freaky. _Sidney_ was freaky), but Zhenya deciding to adopt Sidney meant seeing a lot more of him than Alex had ever intended, and what he learns is that Sidney is lonely. Really lonely.

It’s sad.

It’s heart breaking, actually.

There’s only one thing for it; Alex decides to get over himself and starts getting to know Sidney on his own merit. It’s not long before he’s ashamed to think he ever considered Sidney a freak.

He’s not. Not by any means of the word. Actually, Alex thinks he’s kind of sweet. Cute, even. And tiny.

He fits so well in between Alex and Zhenya, his body, no less broad but smaller, slotting into the place that makes Zhenya and Alex whole, as if he was always meant to be there. As if he is just an extension of their bond. Alex likes having him there, way more than he should, probably. He can’t help it. Can’t help the way his stomach flutters when Sidney turns to him and smiles, all shy and hesitant. Can’t help the way his heart beats a little faster, to feel Sidney’s head rest against his shoulder, inevitably falling asleep a half hour into whatever action movie Zhenya forces them to sit through. Alex will look up, feeling the soft exhales of Sidney’s breath against his neck and meet Zhenya’s gaze, swallowing against the warm look in his soul mate’s eyes, proprietary and self-satisfied.

Alex is discomfited to feel those same feelings in himself, but he can’t help it. He looks at Zhenya and Sidney and recognise them both as his own.

It’s greedy. Selfish. But Alex feels a pull towards Sidney as strong and fierce as the one he feels towards Zhenya. He thinks, _maybe_ , just maybe Sidney does belong to them.

Maybe he really is an extension of Alex and Zhenya’s bond. Maybe Sidney isn’t mateless after all, only he has two soul mates, which would likely have confused his senses before he lost them altogether. 

No wonder Sidney had always believed himself to have no mate; his soul had been reaching in two different directions and he’d been too young to sort out the sensory overload. 

It makes sense, Alex thinks. Both he and Zhenya had been unusually old before they recognised each other as their own, the bond not settling until years after they first met. They’d thought it was just a quirk of being them—Zhenya is hardly normal, and Alex _definitely_ isn’t—but now he wonders.

What if the bond had taken so long to settle because it was still missing its third? Because it was still waiting for Sidney?

Sidney who’s been sensory blind since he was a teen.

A three-way bond is rare but not unprecedented, and Alex knows that Sidney can’t feel the call of his mate the way everyone else does, but it feels right to _him_. He thinks—hopes—that Zhenya feels the same.

Alex intends to find out.

“So serious,” Zhenya comments when Alex leaves the safety of the visitor’s locker room before the game that night and ventures into Penguins territory. Alex has been there before, even got to use it when Team Russia was there for practice before the World Cup. The room had been decked out in the white, blue and red of the Russian flag then. It had never looked better.

Zhenya smiles at him, and Alex feels his brows easing, breaking into a grin at the sight of him. He moves into Zhenya’s space, ignoring the guys around him as he leans in close enough to press a kiss against Zhenya’s mouth.

Zhenya hums. He bites at Alex’s lower lip before soothing over the gentle sting with his tongue. “Hello, darling,” he whispers, even if no one else speaks Russian, because Zhenya is a hapless romantic but knows better than to let his teammates know.

“Missed you,” Alex says. They get to see each other far too rarely. He pulls back, casting his eyes around the room for Sidney and frowning when he can’t find him.

Zhenya laughs at him and eyes him knowingly. “He’s with Dana,” he says. “Adjusting his skates. He’ll be back soon.”

“Sidney Crosby such diva he need special skates?” Alex asks in English, aiming a shit-eating grin at the rest of the room and cackling when no less than three rolled up balls of tape come flying at him.

The Penguins have mostly gotten used to Alex’s antics over the years, and the way he chooses to display his affection for Sidney (with taunts and extra accurate hits out of love), but they still take exception to it sometimes. They're good teammates. He'll give them that.

“We’ll meet up after?” he asks, turning back to Zhenya. “You’ll bring Sid?”

“Of course.” Zhenya does him the favour of not mentioning how anxious Alex sounded, how eager to see them both, his Zhenya and his Sidney.

Alex nods. “Good,” he says. He leans in to give Zhenya a parting kiss, and adds, “We’ll talk then.”

Enough is enough, he thinks. He wants Sidney, and he’s pretty sure Zhenya wants him too. They just need to know if Sidney wants them back. Both of them.

 

***Zhenya***

 

Sidney falls in love often. 

Zhenya learns this early into their friendship. It’s surprising, not least of all because Sidney is sensory blind but because he is so reserved, so cautious of fame seekers.

He’s also painfully shy. It takes some time before Zhenya fully understands just how shy Sidney is.

He watches Sidney meet guy after girl after guy, falling for them at the drop of a hat and a ready smile, only to have them cringe away, half fearful or outright disgusted when they learn that Sidney is mateless and can never make a soul connection.

It’s painful to watch, and Sidney never learns or never cares; he keeps picking up when they’re out, bringing home one night stands that never become more. They never stay. They never want to.

Zhenya loses count of how many heartaches he nurses Sid through, how many times he hugs him close and promises they’re not worthy of him anyway and does he want Zhenya to kick their ass?

“Don’t be stupid,” Sidney always says, “you don’t even know how to fight.” Which is true in a technical sense, but Zhenya would totally have kicked some ass if Sidney wanted him to.

“Should I be worried?” Sanja asks once, while Zhenya has got his lips wrapped around his dick— which is an insult to Zhenya’s, frankly, superb cock sucking skills. “I mean—oh, _fuck_ , son of a bitch—you talk about Sidney Crosby an awful lot.”

“Shut up, sweetheart,” Zhenya says, and goes to town on his soul mate. 

Sanja says very little after that.

It occurs to Zhenya later that he does talk quite a bit about Sidney, and while Sanja knows who Sid is in the Sidney Crosby, best hockey player in the world, kind of sense— 

“What do you mean best player in the world? I’m obviously the best player in the world.”

“Shut up, sweetheart.”

—he doesn’t know Sid, the guy who’s too careless with his heart, who is Zhenya’s best friend, and who will go mental if anyone messes with his _routines_.

(“I am not that bad, Geno.”

“Uh huh.”)

Sidney is a whole lot of crazy but he still needs protecting. Sanja just hasn’t figured that out yet.

This is how Sanja gets to know Sidney: over food and _Die Hard 2._ Zhenya didn’t plan it. It happens in Washington after a game. Zhenya is spending the night at Sanja’s when Sidney calls and ask if they can come get him. He doesn’t want to call the team and Sanja is the only one he knows in DC with a car.

Zhenya would normally say no—he only has a short window of opportunity to spend with his soul mate and wouldn’t sacrifice that, not even for Sid—except Sidney would never call unless it was important, and when they show up Sanja is the furious one, Sanja is the one who takes one look at Sidney’s split lip and demands, “Who the hell did this to you?”

Zhenya is fuming, but it isn’t the first time Sid has gotten a fist to his face and it probably won’t be the last. He’s tried to make Sidney stop going out alone, but he won’t listen. Won’t stop putting himself out there even though he knows there are people who react with anger and violence to someone like Sid. Someone without a soul mate.

Sidney shrugs. “Just some guy,” he says, and gets in the car.

Zhenya and Sanja share a look, a conversation passing between them in that single glance. They bring Sidney home with them.

It’s not the first time Sid has joined them for a date, but it’s the first time Sanja doesn’t complain about it. The first time he says, “This is nice,” with Zhenya’s arm around him and Sidney asleep at his other side.

Zhenya grins and nuzzles his neck.

The next time the Caps play in Pittsburgh, Sanja invites Sidney to join them for dinner without Zhenya having to ask if it’s okay first.

Sidney says no—he has a date of his own—but he tags along the next time, and the time after that, until years later, Sidney hardly sees other people at all and it’s practically a given that he joins Zhenya and Sanja whenever they’re in the same city.

It feels good. _Really_ good.

Zhenya loves Sanja. He loves him more than words could ever explain, but he loves Sidney too, and has loved him for a while. He can feel him, feel the essence of his soul, slotting perfectly between the gap in Zhenya and Sanja’s soul bond where a third was always meant to fit in.

He’s just been waiting for Sanja to catch up.

“We should talk…about Sid,” Sanja says after a game in Pittsburgh, and Zhenya smiles. He nods and kisses Sanja deep, pouring how much he loves Sanja into the kiss, having a whole conversation without words.

“Yes, we should.”

It’s time.

 

** *Sidney* **

 

Geno is Sidney’s best friend and his favourite person to talk to in the whole world, but Sid falls in love with Alex first. Considering Alex is a bit of a jerk to him those first few years, this probably says more about Sidney than it does Alex.

Not that it matters. It’s not as if Sid can ever tell him; he would never do that to Geno—sweet, kind and loveable Geno who is a better friend than Sid deserves most times, who makes sure Tanger doesn’t mess with Sid’s sticks before games anymore, who bullies the rookies when they think they can touch his peanut butter and who has a questionable love of distressed denim and dangerous animals. Geno can be a bit of an ass sometimes, but he is also considerate in a thousand different ways, and— 

Sidney isn’t quite sure how or when it happens, but he falls in love with Alex first and then Geno second, and never falls out of love with either of them. Sidney has always been unlucky in love, but God really screwed him over there.

Not only was he born without a soul mate, but he’s fallen in love with a happily bonded pair.

“You understand you can never tell them?” Backström tells him once, a non-sequitur at a media event.

Maybe if it had been anyone else, Sidney would have scoffed and pretended he didn’t know what they were talking about, but this is Nicklas Backström and even Geno knows how he feels about Alex.

_Alex_ knows how Backström feels about Alex.

So Sidney says, “I wouldn’t.” He’s been careful to hide his feelings, because Geno and Alex are important to him, they’ve worked their way into Sid’s circle of trusted people, his family, and he doesn’t ever want to lose that.

Which means they can never know how he feels about them.

“Good,” Backström says. He claps Sidney on the shoulder, offering him a sad smile, and takes his leave.

It’s the last and only time they speak of it.

So Sidney is in love but hides it well. He stops hooking up so much—which everyone seems relieved about—and starts saying yes when Geno, and then, confusingly, Alex, invites him out for dinners and movie nights and suddenly there’s been a stretch of years where Sidney has been single and hasn’t really minded.

He used to be so lonely before Geno and Alex, used to fill that gap in his soul with sex and anyone who’d look at him twice, but he doesn’t anymore. He thinks he can be happy with what he has. He thinks he can be content with just being Geno and Alex’s friend as long as he doesn’t feel the soul-crushing loneliness that’s been haunting him since before he went sensory blind.

He doesn’t need a soul mate when he has his friends, his family.

“How you know, though?”

“Know what?”

“That you have no soul mate?”

Sidney stares. Geno winks at him, not even bothering to hold back his grin, and Alex looks genuinely curious, holding Sidney’s gaze firmly.

They’re enjoying a nice dinner after a game in Washington (Geno cooked; neither Alex or Sid is to be trusted in the kitchen), and Sidney thought they’d been weirdly formal when they asked him to join them at Alex’s house—Alex is always that much more magnanimous when he trounces the Penguins, but he’d been antsy when he invited Sidney over. Alex is never antsy.

Sidney had thought something might be up, but he wasn’t expecting this.

He doesn’t talk about being mateless. No one does. No one wants to.

“Me and Sanja wonder. Think maybe you have soul mate,” Geno says when Sidney remains silent.

“Just can’t tell cause you’re sensory blind,” Alex adds.

“When did you—Are you trying to set me up with someone?” Sidney draws up his shoulders defensively. He’s had this happen before. Friends who’ve just wanted the best for him, who’ve found him so other and so _abnormal_ just because he’s mateless even if they won’t say that to his face.

(“Just go out with her once, Sid. She’s really cool, okay? And maybe you’ll really hit it off. Maybe she’s your—”)

None of them have been his soul mate. They can’t be.

Alex pulls a face. “Not a dating service,” he says derisively. “And Zhenya and I talk last month, in Pittsburgh.”

“Where was I?”

“Sleeping,” Geno says pointedly, and maybe Sidney _had_ fallen asleep sometime after the alien attack of Geno's latest movie, but really, who would believe they’d take out major cities first? Obviously the main priority would be to wipe out all the important military installations so the enemy couldn’t fight back. It’s basic strategy. Everybody knows that.

“Right,” Sidney says. “And you were talking about me? While I was asleep?” It stings, just a little bit.

“Were talking about _us_ ,” Alex corrects, voice heavy with something Sidney can’t quite read.

“Us?” Sidney asks, confused now, and doesn’t get it until Geno says, “The three of us. Me, Sanja, and you. Together.” He’s looking at Sidney the way he always does, as if Sidney is someone precious, someone he loves dearly. It’s the same way he looks at Alex.

Somehow, in between loving Geno and Alex, hiding his feelings for them, Sidney has never noticed that before.

“We love you, Sidney,” Alex says gently. He reaches across the table, taking Sidney’s hand in his. “Think you’re our soul mate.”

And for a second, just one heart-stopping second, Sidney had hoped. 

Alex had said they love him, and Sidney believes that, he does—he has years of happy memories to draw from—but he wishes he’d stopped there. He wishes it wouldn’t hurt.

Sidney pulls his hand away. He stands up without looking at either of them. “I don’t have a soul mate.”

He’s halfway out of the kitchen when he feels a strong arm reeling him back into a firm chest, before he’s being hugged from behind—and that’s Alex. He’s built like a freaking tank. 

“How do you know?” he asks, repeating the question from before.

Sidney breaks out of his hold, pushing at Alex’s chest and putting his strength behind it. He’s angry now. “I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing, but this isn’t funny—”

“Sid—”

“No.” Sidney glares at Geno. He doesn’t want to hear it. “This is—I love you guys too, both of you, I do. But this is cruel.” It’s beyond cruel. Geno especially knows how much being mateless has hurt him over the years. “I’m just gonna leave. Go back to the hotel.”

He gets as far as the kitchen door this time before there’s another hand turning him around, and before Sidney can tell them to just stop it already, to please let him leave, Geno is kissing him hard. Nothing gentle about it.

“You can’t feel that,” Geno says, whispers, when he pulls back. Sidney stares at him, dumbfounded. “Can’t feel like I feel, like Sanja feel, cause you blind.” Geno grabs Sidney’s face between his hands, pressing another kiss to his lips, softly this time. “But you fit, Sid. You fit between us like you part of our bond.”

“Because you’re our soul mate, you just didn’t know,” Alex says, and suddenly he’s there too, drawing Sidney into a kiss that is noticeably different from Geno’s but that feels just as good, just as right.

Sidney starts hoping again. He wonders if Geno and Alex really do feel something, something Sidney can’t. Wonders if what they say is true.

“That’s impossible. I’m mateless. I was born with no soul mate, I never felt the call even before the accident.”

Sidney wasn’t actually born sensory blind. It is the result of an accident when he was just a kid, pushed into the boards at just the wrong angle by an angry, jealous boy who’d known he’d never make it to the NHL and had hated that Sidney would, because that was never in question, not even at thirteen. 

It was Sidney’s first concussion. It robbed him of his soul senses and his ability to multiply by twelve. 

(Seriously, he can’t do it.)

But even before that he’d never felt the call. He’d never felt the sensation of his soul reaching for his other half.

Alex shakes his head. “We think you’re like us, that you have two soul mates and it was confusing your senses. Your soul was reaching in two directions and you didn’t know what was happening.”

“Me and Sanja find each other very late,” Geno reminds him.

Which is true. Geno had already made his way to Pittsburgh before their bond settled; he’d known Alex for years by then.

That was late for a bond to settle. Late and unusual. Maybe—

Sidney swallows. He squashes down the hope building inside of him. “It doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t know anyway. I’d never be able to feel what you feel even if it is true.” He’d be on the outside looking in, like always.

Alex kisses him again, then kisses Geno, sweet and languid. Sidney stares and swallows again for an entirely different reason. He takes a step towards them before he even realises what he’s doing.

Geno tugs at him, moving Sidney until he’s nestled between the two of them, Alex at his front and Geno at his back.

Sidney feels safe. He feels settled like he hasn’t in a long time, like maybe he never has.

“It is true,” Alex says, promises.

“Not lie to you, Sid,” Geno adds. “Not to you, not ever.”

“You really think we’re soul mates?” Sidney asks, and this time he doesn’t bother to keep the hope out of his voice. He doesn’t hide how much he wants that.

“Know we are,” Geno says. He presses his mouth against the column of Sidney’s neck, moving up, up, up to his ear until he closes his teeth around his lobe and Sidney moans and closes his eyes. 

“Say yes, Sidney,” he hears Alex say. He feels a kiss on his jaw, his cheek, his nose. “Say you’ll be ours, Sidney.” Alex kisses him, pushing his tongue into Sid’s mouth and really, it’s just rude not to kiss him back.

“Look at you,” Geno says appreciatively when Alex starts kissing Sidney's throat. His voice is hoarse and he sounds wrecked. “My own. My Sanja and my Sidney.” Geno says something sweet-sounding in Russian, but Sidney is too distracted by the hand squeezing the meat of his ass and the feel of Alex’s tongue licking up the side of his neck to ask what it means. “And we be yours, yes? Your Zhenya and your Sanja.”

Sidney smiles. He gently tugs at Alex’s hair to get him to lift off his neck so he can kiss him instead. Alex pulls back after a few seconds and grins at him. Sidney grins back before turning his head to the side so he can kiss Geno too. Sweet Geno, who is his soul mate apparently. They both are.

“My Geno and my Alex,” Sidney corrects, because they are, they’re his, his very own.

Geno and Alex share a look over his head. They turn to smile at Sidney, and Sidney feels his breath hitch. He thinks about growing old with them, of never being alone again, and it feels as if his heart is overflowing with all he’s feeling. Sidney can’t feel with his soul, but he can feel this.

He loves the two of them so much.

“Your Geno and your Alex,” Geno says, and Alex echoes him.

“Mine. And yours too.”

A three-way bond is maybe not normal, but Sidney doesn’t ever want to be normal with Geno and Alex. They’re unconventional, the three of them, but it works.

It always has.

Sidney just needed some time to see that.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to my [Tumblr](http://www.hazel3017.tumblr.com)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Outside of Normal by Heather_3017](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10648629) by [brightnail](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightnail/pseuds/brightnail)




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